174 Difference

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Student Participation and

Social Difference: Race, Gender, Status,

and Context in Law School Classes

174

H

aving examined professors’ discourse profiles, we turn now to analyze stu-

dents’ participation in the classes of this study. Over the past decade, there

has emerged a growing debate over the way students of different races, genders,
and backgrounds respond to law school pedagogy. In a study that received much
attention, Professor Lani Guinier and her coauthors at the University of Pennsyl-

vania indicted traditional law school teaching for creating a chilling climate that is
differentially discouraging to women.^1 Other studies have found a negative response

to law schools among students with public interest ambitions, and, because more
women and students of color fit this profile, have found that this phenomenon has
a differentially negative impact on their experience of law school.^2 In addition,
several high-profile legal challenges to affirmative action in law school admissions
have brought the question of race in law school to the forefront.^3 In a sense, these
cases have highlighted a shocking dearth of empirical research on issues of racial
inclusion in law school, despite the arguable centrality of this issue to questions of
discrimination and representation in the legal profession. Although there has been
a growing literature on the question of gender in law school, the number of em-
pirical studies examining racial dynamics—for example, the effects of legal peda-
gogy on racial inclusion, and the importance of faculty or student cohort diversity
to successful integration—remains much smaller. Indeed, with a few notable ex-
ceptions, there has been little systematic empirical attention to the effects of race,
class, or school status on students’ experiences, although there have been numer-
ous first-person accounts documenting a sense of exclusion among many students
of color, as well as among working-class students.^4
This study tracked both race and gender in law school classrooms, and it is
the first to provide systematic observational data on race in these settings. In addi-